The pyrometallurgical reduction of metalliferous ores and concentrates typically involves the heating of the ore or concentrate in a smelting furnace with a reductant to a temperature which generally melts the ore and at which chemical reaction of the ore/concentrate with the reductant reduces the ore/concentrate into metallic product or higher end-value product with a lower oxidation state. Large amounts of energy are required to initiate and sustain reduction processes in such smelting finances, and the recovery rate of metallic product often renders such operations commercially unviable. The non-reduced components of the ore/concentrate form a slag, which often contains valuable metallic content. Recovery of the metallic content from such slags is, however, again often commercially unfeasible by conventional methods.
Microwave radiation has been utilised in various industrial applications for the application of energy to heat materials, including the microwave heating of chemical reactants to kinetically and thermodynamically stimulate the same for the initiation of chemical reactions. Microwave treatment of metalliferous ores and other comparable materials has been utilised as an augmentative precursor treatment, applying energy to the ore to thermodynamically stimulate the same and prepare it for conventional recovery techniques such as conventional pyrometallurgical reduction, leaching or hydrometallurgical recovery processes.